“Vince makes you look inside yourself for the answers that already exist. He is a great leader not because he eads, rather he lets you lead yourself where you need to go. Vince’s workshop was self-affirming and life-affirming” ~ Laura Fielding, Recreational Therapist, Canuck Place
Below you will find a description of my most popular breakout sessions aimed to inspire your conference delegates. Sessions can be tailored according to the allotted time, and, as with all my playshops, they are fun and interactive, while offering practical skill sets.
Remembering to Play – Inspiring Joy, Freedom & Self-Care
Play is the language of children, and it is the vehicle through which they learn and understand our world. To educate and support children, we must learn to speak their language by remembering to play ourselves. Remembering to Play is a fun and interactive playshop that supports you to remember the wisdom of a child’s mindset and the importance of levity and joyful authentic expression as cornerstones for educating and healthy, productive living. Benefits include: exploring the principle of Yes And as a means of creatively engaging and being receptive to others, being present, open and flexible, looking for possibilities and expanding creativity, illuminating limiting beliefs and assumptions, self-care, learning fun games for children, and much, much more!
Cultivating Intuition – The Heart of Healthy & Productive Decision Making
Intuition is your birthright. As children you freely connected to your intuition so naturally that you didn’t even know it was intuition. It was an everyday awareness permeating your existence that you were intimately connected to and a part of. Life felt magical and your environment was filled with endless possibilities. Over time, however, due to social conditioning you disconnected from this sense of presence and wonder and the gifts it has to offer. In this fun and interactive playshop, reclaim the wisdom of intuition and magic of your inner child. Learn to trust your inner resourcefulness, expand your range of choice, bring greater ease to your decision making, and deepen your connection to others. Bring greater awareness to how you hear and respond to the deeper needs of children, and support them to stay connected to their intuition. Walk away feeling a deeper sense of Self and inspired to make new, empowering decisions.
Communicating from the Heart ~ Inspiring Creativity & Connection
When we communicate from the heart, we listen fully and bring the best out of others. We ask questions that draw out people’s feelings, dreams and desires and create a safe place for others to share their authentic Self. In this fun and interactive playshop, learn practical communication and awareness skills that inspire creativity and connection including three levels of listening and curiosity. Learn the difference between engaging the logical mind and the intuitive heart. Walk away with practical tools that can be used in all personal and professional relationships.
The Gift of Empathy ~ Meeting People In Their Reality
We are very good at fixing people and solving their problems. When we do, we take people away from their experience and impose our own feelings and ideas onto them. Empathy is a gift people are hungering for. It has the power to transform relationship conflict into openness and respect, and to create greater trust in future conversations. In this fun and interactive playshop, explore where you would like to offer more empathy to your students, peers, friends and family; and explore where you would like receive more empathy as well. Learn specific skills that will help you connect before you correct — engage the human being — and meet them in their reality.
Leader as Coach ~ Communication Skills for Empowering Others
Coaching skills are being recognized as an important competency in building and sustaining productive relationships within organizations, and with clients and community members. Coaching assumes people are naturally creative, resourceful and whole, capable of finding their own answers and offering creative solutions on personal and professional matters. People are empowered to be active contributors to the working relationship, and to become more responsible for the outcomes. In this fun and interactive playshop, participants will learn the benefits of coaching and how it differentiates from being directive or advising, and how to identify ‘coachable’ moments and apply coaching skills in those situations. They will practice the basic coaching skills of asking powerful questions, listening and acknowledgement, and explore where these skills can be applied in their leadership style.
Imagination & Improvisation ~ Claiming The Confidence to Make & Shake Things Up
We have been taught to live by certain rules and expectations—to please others and do things right. As such, we have lost trust in our ability to follow our imaginative whims, and carve out new and exciting paths. In this fun and interactive playshop, learn why imagination and improvisation are essential skills for today’s emerging world. Liberate your spontaneity, gain the confidence to act outside the box, reconnect to your body wisdom, and reclaim your childlike Self. Explore where more imagination and improvisation can enhance and enliven your life, and discover how you can encourage others to make and shake things up themselves.
6 Steps to Asking For What You Want ~ From Victim to Personal Responsibility
Asking for what we want can be one of the most empowering things we can do. Yet, it can also be quite challenging for reasons such as: We believe it is bad or selfish to put our needs first; we are not entirely clear on what we want; we have not been taught or encouraged to express ourselves authentically; and we fear rejection and change. In this fun and interactive playshop, learn six simple steps to help you clarify and express what you want. Overcome the fears and blocks that keep you stuck in victim energy, and begin to claim your voice and take greater personal responsibility for your life. Understand how by learning to ask for what you want, you will create more room for others, including children, to state their needs.
Doodle, Dream, and the Dance of Co-Creation ~ Unlocking the Gifts of Free Unstructured Play
When we think of doodling, we picture a child whiling away the time scribbling or drawing. Doodling, however, is much more than that. It is the experimental and exploratory beginnings of the creative process. It is the means of opening the gate to our body wisdom, and to the dreams and possibilities that lie within. In this fun and interactive playshop, rediscover a love for doodling, and understand its power for opening you up to your creative potential. Explore the many ways we can joyfully doodle, and how it can free our playful spirits, and nurture the spirits of the children in our lives.
Are You Playing or Being Played? ~ Liberating Yourself from the Masks of Fear and Resistance
Each of us wears masks that keep us from fully inhabiting a playful state. We have inner judges, critics and controllers, aspects within that keep our unbridled authenticity and creativity in check. These parts of ourselves deserve our attention if we are to live more whole-heartedly and positively engage children. Bringing them out into the open by playing with them, allowing them full voice and movement, can be incredibly liberating. We move from being played to playing with them—from letting these aspects run us from the shadows to befriending and freeing ourselves from them. In this fun and interactive playshop, explore and inhabit one of your inner resistors and liberate your playful spirit in the process.
The Embodiment of Anger ~ Finding Personal Empowerment through Primal Energy
There are many negative views on anger swirling about. We perceive it as dangerous or wrong, in large part because of our upbringing and what we see on the news. Yet anger is primal energy, a signal that we are out of alignment with our integrity, a powerful source from which we set boundaries and say No, and a gateway into tremendous creativity and healing. Take the negativity out of anger and we discover that anger is there to be felt such that we become more fully alive, attuned to ourselves, and more able to hold space for the anger of others, including children. In this fun and interactive playshop, discover anger’s many gifts and where this primal energy lives in you.
Illuminating Your Leadership Shadow ~ Reclaiming Balance and the Gifts Hidden Within
What part of yourself do you not bring to work with you? Each of us has many aspects of our Self that do not enter the office, but these hidden qualities, when kept in the shadow, limit our capacity to make empowering choices and to perceive others with an open heart and mind. In this fun and interactive playshop, participants will explore what they do not give themselves permission to be at work—their shadow—and how their shadow can strengthen their leadership capacity and wellbeing. Specifically, participants will explore how their shadow impacts their balance, how it fuels judgment of Self and others, and how, when embraced, it can open them up to new, untapped resourcefulness, self-worth and acceptance.